Arveladze ends Old Firm agony for Rangers

Shota Arveladze rejoices in the nickname of Mr Bean because of his facial likeness to Rowan Atkinson, and he certainly left Rangers fans smiling all the way home after an extra-time CIS Insurance Cup quarter- final winner over Celtic.

The victory finally ended an unhappy sequence of seven consecutive Old Firm defeats for the Ibrox team and earned them local bragging rights even if they may be brief, for the next derby is only 10 days away in the Premierleague.

Their supporters savoured this success, though, after Arveladze's 100th-minute winner completed a spirited comeback that started with Dado Prso's late equaliser to John Hartson's opener.

The Georgian, a 78th- minute substitute for Peter Lovenkrands, also had a hand in the build-up to the Prso goal so it was little wonder his delighted manager Alex McLeish insisted: "I'll take some credit for the change.

"But this has been a win over Celtic that has been a long time coming. I have felt the agony and so have the fans so we're very pleased.

"We showed great spirit after unjustly going behind in my opinion and overall I feel we definitely edged it.

"Now we must look to clawing back Celtic's lead in the Premierleague when they come back here, although we have a vital match at Hibs before then."

The Celtic manager Martin O'Neill insisted that this defeat would have no bearing on that league fixture.

"I am sure it will make no appreciable difference," he maintained. "It will be a similar game next time.

"As for this one, all good things come to an end. I felt when we scored we were reasonably comfortable without being completely in command but we couldn't see it through and we lost a game I felt at 1-0 we were going to win. But it's not the end of the world."

It is, instead, the end of that remarkable sequence of results in this fixture and Arveladze believes it may prove to be a pivotal point in the season.

"It was our day and now we want a good run," he declared. "It was always important for us to stop that Celtic run and now we've done it and I can honestly say I never thought we looked like losing at any stage."

There was just a hint of Mr Bean about that latter remark because after a dominant early spell Rangers struggled to maintain that supremacy and fell behind to a trademark Celtic goal after 66 minutes as Hartson nodded home an Alan Thompson corner.

There was a feeling among both sets of fans of "here we go again" at that point and it took the home team until six minutes from the end to equalise when a Hamed Namouchi shot was beaten out by David Marshall only as far as Prso, who had the simplest of tasks to score.

So it went into extra-time but in the end it was Arveladze who mattered most, as he finished in style a Rangers breakaway move that began with Fernando Ricksen in his own penalty area, swept forward as he played a one-two with Namouchi and ended as Novo distracted Celtic's defence with a clever run to leave the scorer with a crucial glimpse of goal.